Next year Vince Gill will be honored with a coveted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He will join his wife, Amy Grant, who received a star in 2006. Some of his other honors include 20 Grammys, 18 CMA Awards, over 26 million albums sold, and inductions into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. Though it’s hard to deny his success now, Gill says that as a young man, this type of life “wasn’t even in the realm of my thinking.”
At 19, Gill left his home in Oklahoma to move to Los Angeles, where he lived from 1976 to 1983 calling it “an amazing place to be” and saying that “it would have been a much better situation for me than coming to Nashville at that time.” In LA, he was surrounded by many of the artists he had admired for years. “The most amazing thing was that it seemed to me that everybody I was really nuts about was out there,” he says. “It was mind-numbing to me who I could go hear play. Those guys I had seen on the back of record jackets were playing in the clubs. I couldn’t believe that there was that much stuff going on and that many people. At 19, you are wide-eyed and yet to see much of anything. It was a wonderful experience and I am grateful for that stretch of time. It really puts you in your place in a humbling way. You thought you were a pretty good musician and go out there and then say, ‘Gee whiz, everybody in every bar and club and studio is pretty amazing.’”
In Los Angeles, Gill began songwriting as well as performing wherever he could, whether it was at the Troubadour or on street corners. “I was a seriously struggling musician, so I was also out there playing on the Redondo Beach for tips and borrowing cars to get around in and first getting my feet under me.” Yet despite the shaky start, Gill did find success in LA, first by joining Sundance, a bluegrass band that opened for Guy Clark, then with Pure Prairie League where he recorded three albums as lead singer, then in Rodney Crowell’s band the Cherry Bombs, before signing with RCA Records as a solo artist and moving to Nashville.
During this time he released three albums that included some of his first charting singles, such as “Cinderella” and “Oklahoma Borderline” as well as songwriting for other artists and touring with Emmylou Harris. In 1989 he signed with MCA Records where he gained even more force as a country star, winning his first Grammy and CMA Award. The accolades have continued since then, and Gill is the only artist to win five consecutive CMA Male Vocalist of the Year awards and the only songwriter to win Song of the Year four times for “When I Call Your Name,” “Look At Us,” “I Still Believe in You” and “Go Rest High On That Mountain.”
With a new album, Guitar Slinger, scheduled for release this fall and a new single “Threaten Me With Heaven” coming out this summer, it is clear that this country star won’t be setting any time soon.
